Don Cheadle's film won't be a Miles Davis 'biography'

About “Miles Ahead,” Don Cheadle tweeted: “Everybody, the film will not be a biopic in the traditional sense, but a wall to wall Miles Davis experience to be sure.”(Photo: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

"Not a biography"? What did actor-director Don Cheadle mean when he said that about "Miles Ahead," a feature film he'll shoot here in July with Ewan McGregor and Zoe Saldana?

After the Greater Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky Film Commission announced the movie May 12, Cheadle tweeted The Enquirer: "It's not a 'biography,' but I will be there."

In a tweet to WKRC-TV he said: "Everybody, the film will not be a biopic in the traditional sense, but a wall to wall Miles Davis experience to be sure."

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Cheadle plans to focus on 1975-79, when the jazz genius withdrew from the public eye after 35 years as a major figure in the bebop, cool jazz and jazz fusion movements.

The film will dramatize how the trumpeter-composer "bursts out of his silent period, and conspires with a Rolling Stone writer (McGregor) to steal back his music," the trade publication reported in November. In his 1989 memoir, "Miles: The Autobiography" (1989), Davis talked about his drug and sex addictions while living as a hermit during that period.

"For us as creative people, the time of his life that was most interesting was the five years when he wasn't playing, when he was silent. What was going on in his mind? And how did he come out of it and return to music?" Cheadle said in a Nov. 7 Hollywood Reporter story, when the film was called "Kill the Trumpet Player."

Casting of McGregor ("Star Wars") as a Rolling Stone reporter and Zoe Saldana (NBC's "Rosemary's Baby," "Avatar") as Davis's wife, Frances, also was in that November story.

The film commission here called "Miles Ahead" an "exploration of the life and music of Miles Davis." It intentionally did not mention the word "biography," said Kristen Erwin Schlotman, executive director.

The movie is a passion project for Cheadle ("House of Lies," "Hotel Rwanda," "Iron Man 2"), who will make his directorial debut and produce from a script he wrote with Steven Baigelman.

Cheadle, an accomplished songwriter and saxophone player, told the Hollywood Reporter in 2010 that he was "trying to do what Miles Davis would have wanted us to do, which is approach it as artists with his life as the canvas."

"In being successful, some people say he sold out, but it's the opposite. You can stay in one place forever and try to make the same money from the same core fans, but saying to your audience, 'I'm going here now, come along or don't,' that's brave, risky and dangerous. … That's what we're trying to honor in this story – that kind of spirit," Cheadle said.

All of "Miles Ahead" will be filmed here, Schlotman said. Pre-production begins just weeks after completion of "Carol," a 1952 drama totally filmed here with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.